Because the league was not winning big enough during the lockout, it decided to take its case to twitter.

The league opened a new account — @NBA_Labor — which the NBA could use to defend the owners case in cyberspace. To right all those perception wrongs. But it didn’t take long before that account came under attack from all quarters.

One attack came from Nazr Mohammed. It started when the Pistons Charlie Villanueva tried to explain on twitter how the owners get to take expenses off the top of the basketball related income (or BRI) pie, so that the proposed 50/50 split is not really that. Mohammed had said something similar. The league’s new account sent this out.

Then the monster NBA official twitter account (with more than 3 million followers) retweeted it. Mohammed was ticked and responded.

By the way, Mohammed is right. The owners do get a cut off the top of the BRI for certain expenses, and they asked to expand those expenses in the new labor deal. That seems to have fallen away, but the owners do get the first cut before money is divided, something the sides agreed to.

The first tweet the NBA’s labor account sent out was to correct ESPN’s Henry Abbott on a post. And it turns out, the league’s twitter was technically right due to new parts of the labor agreement not yet made public. But Abbott asks a few good questions about the account, too, such as are 140 characters enough to explain a nuanced CBA?

My question is this: Does the league need another bully pulpit to make its case? The owners are going to win the lockout. Big. How big is the only question left on the table. Is starting a new twitter account to play watchdog on the PR battle really going to look good and help with that battle on top of it? So far it doesn’t look like it.

In fact, in Saturday’s dunk contest, he didn’t look like a dunker at all.

The Pacers star missed all three attempts of his first dunk, and a Black Panther mask was by far the biggest draw of his second. Oladipo was eliminated after the first round.

Maybe Dennis Smith Jr. wasn’t the only eliminated dunker who left something in his bag. This Oladipo dunk – 180 degrees, throwing ball off the backboard with his left hand while in mid-air, dunking with his right hand – while preparing in Los Angeles was awesome.

A statement released Wednesday by the NFL and NBA clubs says their 90-year-old owner is resting comfortably at Ochsner Medical Center, a hospital which also serves as a major sponsor and which owns naming rights to the teams’ training headquarters.

Benson has owned the New Orleans Saints since 1985 and bought the New Orleans Pelicans in 2012.

In recent years, Benson has overhauled his estate plan so that his third wife, Gayle, would be first in line to inherit control of the two major professional franchises.

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said he’d be surprised if Kawhi Leonard played again this season, a stark reversal from just a month ago. Back then, even while announcing Leonard was out indefinitely with a quad injury, the San Antonio coach said Leonard wouldn’t miss the rest of the season.

After spending 10 days before the All-Star break in New York consulting with a specialist to gather a second opinion on his right quad injury, All-NBA forward Kawhi Leonard bears the burden of determining when he’s prepared to play again, sources told ESPN.

Leonard has been medically cleared to return from the right quad tendinopathy injury, but since shutting down a nine-game return to the Spurs that ended Jan. 13, he has elected against returning to the active roster, sources said.

The uncertainty surrounding this season — and Leonard’s future which could include free agency in the summer of 2019 — has inspired a palpable stress around the organization, league sources said.

At first glance, this sounds like Derrick Rose five years ago. Even after he was cleared to play following a torn ACL, the then-Bulls star remained mysterious about when he’d suit up. His confidence in his physical abilities seemed to be a major issue, and he was never the same player since (suffering more leg injuries).

But the Spurs famously favor resting players to preserve long-term health. They seem unlikely to rush back Leonard. They might even sit players who want to play more often. And Leonard isn’t Rose.

Still, it’s clear something is amiss in San Antonio. Maybe not amiss enough to end Leonard’s tenure there, but the longer this lingers, the more time for tension to percolate.